Employees who perform unsatisfactorily are rarely given a bonus after being booted out the door. But the MSU athletics department is developing a troubling habit of rewarding those it no longer wants to have around.
On Wednesday, officials announced MSU will pay former football head coach Bobby Williams $550,000 to end his contract. Athletics Director Ron Mason fired Williams on Nov. 4 amid team controversy and a losing record.
That severance package is more than twice as much as what the university had to pay Williams under the terms of his contract. MSU could have ended the deal at any point for one-year's salary - about $214,800, according to the five-year rolling contract. Officials said the deal is the amount Williams would have made through June 30 plus the termination payment.
For someone who didn't do a good job leading the Spartan football team, that seems completely inappropriate. Williams, who was the first Spartan football coach to be fired since George Perles was ousted, did not deserve more than twice what the university originally agreed to pay him. The team faltered on and off the field with Williams' leadership, and its dreams of a Big Ten title hopelessly suffered because of it. Two of the teams' four co-captains are indefinitely suspended, and the program's reputation has been severely tarnished.
And the timing for this deal couldn't be worse: Academic departments are facing 3-7 percent funding cuts because of an expected decrease in state aid. While the money for Williams' settlement will come from the athletics department budget, which is not tied to state appropriations or tuition dollars, it looks just as bad as if MSU was paying off a professor to leave.
More troubling, however, is that the university seems to be developing an attitude of paying whatever it takes to get rid of poor performers, rather than taking the effort to hire qualified people from the beginning.
In the past decade, MSU has spent a considerable amount of money to terminate the contracts of disgraced athletics department officials:
• Perles was given about $1 million to walk away from the football squad in November 1994 - not long after he was removed as MSU's athletics director.
• Merrily Dean Baker left MSU with $260,000 in her pocket after being fired from the athletics director's post in 1995.
• Former Athletics Director Merritt Norvell was rewarded with more than $240,000 in salary and consultant costs to be an adviser to the department after he resigned in 1999.
The question begs to be asked: Why is MSU rewarding people who do badly? With the university expected to continue cuts for several years in response to declining of state appropriations, such fiscal irresponsibility is unwarranted.
Many of MSU's sporting facilities have just undergone or are in need of costly renovations and remodeling. The varsity men's gymnastics team was eliminated supposedly to free up enough money to add another women's team.
While MSU might have the money from donations, merchandising deals and ticket sales to handle a buyout now, no one should count on that money being there in the future. The Spartans need to drop this bad habit.
